1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to enterprise resources and, in particular, to accessing resources with disparate sources and technologies. Still more particularly, the present invention provides a method, apparatus, and program for locating inter-enterprise resources using text-based strings.
2. Description of Related Art
Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) is a component software architecture from Sun that is used to build Java applications that run in a server. EJB uses a xe2x80x9ccontainerxe2x80x9d layer that provides common functions such as security and transaction support and delivers a consistent interface to applications regardless of the type of server. Components are program modules that are designed to interoperate with each other at runtime. Components may be written by different programmers using different development environments and they may or may not be platform independent. Components can be run in stand-alone machines, on a LAN, intranet or the Internet.
The terms component and object are used synonymously. Component architectures have risen out of object-oriented technologies, but the degree to which they comply to all the rules of object technology is often debated. Component architectures may use a client/component model, in which the client application is designed as the container that holds other components or objects. The client container is responsible for the user interface and coordinating mouse clicks and other inputs to all the components. A pure object model does not require a container. Any object can call any other without a prescribed hierarchy.
Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) defines the communication protocols and datatype mappings for EJBs. CORBA is a standard from the Object Management Group (OMG) for communicating between distributed objects. CORBA provides a way to execute programs (objects) written in different programming languages running on different platforms no matter where they reside in the network. Technically, CORBA is the communications component of the Object Management Architecture (OMA), which defines other elements such as naming services, security service, and transaction services.
A naming service is software that converts a name into a physical address on a network, providing logical to physical conversion. Names can be user names, computers, printers, services, or files. The transmitting station sends a name to the server containing the naming service software, which sends back the actual address of the user or resource. The process is known as name resolution. A naming service functions as a White Pages for the network.
CORBA defines an Inter-ORB-reference (IOR), which may be externalized as a text string; however, an IOR is not human-readable or interpretable and applies only to CORBA objects. Microsoft Component Object Model (COM), which defines a structure for building program routines that can be called up and executed in a Windows(trademark) environment, defines a moniker as a generalized resource handle that can be externalized as human readable. However, monikers require binding to the resource and apply only to COM objects. The prior art fails to provide a standard method for identifying and accessing resources across technologies, such as EJB, CORBA, and COM.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a method, apparatus, and program for locating inter-enterprise resources using human readable text-based strings.
The present invention provides a standard format for a text string called an enterprise identifier, which acts as a handle to access resources from disparate sources and technologies. Enterprise identifiers use extensible markup language (XML) format to allow a resource identifier to be created manually without accessing the resource. The identifier may be easily passed between enterprises via business-to-business connection, e-mail, telephone, or facsimile. Data may be extracted from the identifier for display or programmatic use without accessing the resource, thus avoiding unnecessary data access and transfer.